While I agree that it's silly to charge for long distance in the 21st century, using the IXC as a billing system for micropayments has its advantages. Why not let me pay for conference calls via my phone bill instead of requiring me to set up a separate credit arrangement with a conferencing company? The European caller-pays scheme for mobile calls is widely criticized now that mobile minutes are cheap, but in the early days it was instrumental in encouraging Europeans to give out their mobile numbers while Americans were still afraid of getting calls. This worked because the mobile numbers had dedicated city codes so the caller knew there would be an extra charge, thus placing the decision in the hands of the person paying. I wouldn't mind abandoning the flat-rate scheme as long as I had some way to disable calls to high-cost NPA-NXXs, similar to what's possible with 900 numbers.

The AT&T Complaint makes interesting reading. It seems they noticed something was amiss when their bill for termination charges went from $2,000 to $2,000,000 per month in a community of only 57 households. They also took objection to the Iowa LEC moving the interconnection point to increase the mileage used to calculate the access charge.